Craft claims a need exists for civil disobediance in women's movement

Activist Nikki Craft spoke on civil disobedience and her personal
involvement in the feminist movement last week. Pro-femina sponsored the
lecture.

"Civil disobedience is a very important option," Craft said. She has been
arrested 34 times on a variety of charges. Women would not have been
granted the right to vote had it not been for "a few women willing to
illegally enter the voting booths," she said. "We take what we learned from
the non-violent movement and apply it."

Getting arrested, however, "is only a small part" of the women's
movement, Craft stressed. She believes that her actions are "filling a void
that needs to be filled."

Craft has founded numerous activist groups, including:

O+ Women Armed for Self-Protection: "A small group of women committed to
becoming proficient in the use of various weapons, who called for immediate
and drastic retaliation against rapists by their victims."

O+ The Kitty Genovese Women's Project: Craft led a group of women into
the Dallas County Records Building. After months of research, they compiled
the names of approximately 2100 indicted sex offenders and printed over
25,000 copies of the list.

O+ Preying Mantis Women's Brigade (PMWB): This group's statement of
purpose claims, "... We refuse to hold mankind's laws, objects, and
positions of power to be sacred, and vow to ... create havoc and ... topple
the empire that profits from the rape, death, and psychological destruction
of 53 percent of the population."

The primary target of the PMWB was Hustler magazine and its
publisher Larry Flynt. An open letter to Flynt from the brigade accused
Hustler of providing "a slick support network for men who commit
countless atrocities against women ... you routinely make a laughing matter
of sexual torture."

Members of the PMWB went through Santa Cruz, tearing up copies of
Hustler in stores and boycotting all places that sold the magazine.
Their protest resulted in the removal of Hustler from 28 Santa Cruz
stores.

A Pro-femina flyer stated that its opposition to pornography is not based
on any personal distaste for the material. Rather, it said that the
distribution of these materials results in violence to women.

"Women's safety and our very lives depend on challenging these
women-hating, slanderous lies that pornographers are marketing about us,"
stated the "Outlaws for Social Responsibility," another group that Craft
founded.

Craft led a campaign against Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione and
numerous photographs which depicted apparent acts of violence committed
against women. Craft showed pictures which appeared in the magazine such as
a woman hanging from a tree, a girl tied to the outside of a house, and a
female figure dashed against the rocks on a seashore.

"I do not want to hide these images," Craft said. "[We must] get them
into media. Whenever we tear up magazines we do not do it because we think
that to tear up the images is going to help anything; we tear it up in
retaliation. We are not going to respect these images as women. [It is] a
symbolic act of expression."

Craft presented several caveats for the women's movement. She warned the
audience against allying with right-wing groups in the fight against
pornography. "At every demonstration we have `We do not oppose nudity'
signs. We feel it is very important not to ally with the right-wing on this
issue. [We have to] force them to deal with the topless rights."

The "Cross-Your-Heart Support Committee" fought for the right of females
to appear topless in public. Craft and eight other women have been arrested
nine times in Santa Cruz and are taking their case to the state Supreme
Court.

Craft stressed that although the right to appear nude in public is not
the only goal the committee is fighting for, its symbolic value is great.
"It is as trivial as where you sit on a bus," she claimed, comparing her
struggle in Santa Cruz to that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery,
AL.

Craft plans to be arrested in Cape Cod in the summer for appearing
topless on the beach. She invited the audience to attend. "If I can turn
one woman into a criminal, then I have done my job here."